[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Nevin73 wrote:

If RvW is overturned I do wonder how it would reshape the politics if the single issue abortion voters are suddenly freed to think for themselves. Don't get me wrong, I don't want RvW overturned but it begs the question if the GOP might be shooting itself in the foot.

No, they'll just switch to defending their new abortion bans instead of trying to implement them. The only way the single issue voters would splinter after overturning RvW is if Democrats completely gave up trying to get it back.

Nevin73 wrote:

If RvW is overturned I do wonder how it would reshape the politics if the single issue abortion voters are suddenly freed to think for themselves. Don't get me wrong, I don't want RvW overturned but it begs the question if the GOP might be shooting itself in the foot.

There is always another manufactured grievance waiting.

That much hate, judgement, misogyny and zealousness has too much energy build up to not continue rolling over innocents.

Nevin73 wrote:

If RvW is overturned I do wonder how it would reshape the politics if the single issue abortion voters are suddenly freed to think for themselves. Don't get me wrong, I don't want RvW overturned but it begs the question if the GOP might be shooting itself in the foot.

They wouldn't stop until it's illegal in every state.

fangblackbone wrote:

That much hate, judgement, misogyny and zealousness has too much energy build up to not continue rolling over innocents.

Ding, ding, ding. These "single issue voters" will find another thing to be singularly united against. My guess? "Them damn homos."

It'll be birth control of any kind next, while elected Republicans fly their mistresses to other countries for their abortions. That's why they put Anti-Contraception Barrett up for SCOTUS.

Yeah that would be my guess too.
It checks off all of the same boxes:
Sex is solely for having babies, check
Control women, check
Classify women as subhuman, check
Mandate Christian morality, check
Disproportionately hurt the poor and PoC, check and check
Leave loopholes for leaders at the top, check

Basically reassert the historical hierarchy before this thing gets away from them.

The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy

And now Lindell is spending on more than just advertising. Last January—on the 9th, he says carefully, placing the date after the 6th—a group of still-unidentified concerned citizens brought him some computer data. These were, allegedly, packet captures, intercepted data proving that the Chinese Communist Party altered electoral results … in all 50 states. This is a conspiracy theory more elaborate than the purported Venezuelan manipulation of voting machines, more improbable than the allegation that millions of supposedly fake ballots were mailed in, more baroque than the belief that thousands of dead people voted. This one has potentially profound geopolitical implications.

That’s why Lindell has spent money—a lot of it, “tens of millions,” he told me—“validating” the packets, and it’s why he is planning to spend a lot more. Starting on August 10, he is holding a three-day symposium in Sioux Falls (because he admires South Dakota’s gun-toting governor, Kristi Noem), where the validators, whoever they may be, will present their results publicly. He has invited all interested computer scientists, university professors, elected federal officials, foreign officials, reporters, and editors to the symposium. He has booked, he says variously, “1,000 hotel rooms” or “all the hotel rooms in the city” to accommodate them. (As of Wednesday, Booking.com was still showing plenty of rooms available in Sioux Falls.)

Wacky though it seems for a businessman to invest so much in a conspiracy theory, there are important historical precedents. Think of Olof Aschberg, the Swedish banker who helped finance the Bolshevik revolution, allegedly melting down the bars of gold that Lenin’s comrades stole in train robberies and reselling them, unmarked, on European exchanges. Or Henry Ford, whose infamous anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, was widely read in Nazi Germany, including by Hitler himself. Plenty of successful, wealthy people think that their knowledge of production technology or private equity gives them clairvoyant insight into politics. But Aschberg, Ford, and Lindell represent the extreme edge of that phenomenon: Their business success gives them the confidence to promote malevolent conspiracy theories, and the means to reach wide audiences.

In the cases of Aschberg and Ford, this had tragic, real-world consequences. Lindell hasn’t created Ford-level havoc yet, but the potential is there. Along with Bannon, Giuliani, and the rest of the conspiracy posse, he is helping create profound distrust in the American electoral system, in the American political system, in the American public-health system, and ultimately in American democracy. The eventual consequences of their actions may well be a genuinely stolen or disputed election in 2024, and political violence on a scale the U.S. hasn’t seen in decades. You can mock Lindell, dismiss him, or call him a crackhead, but none of this will seem particularly funny when we truly have an illegitimate president in the White House and a total breakdown of law and order.

Well now I'm not sure if global warming is happening too quickly or not quickly enough.

The documentaries Lindell made about his election fraud “proofs” are unadulterated coke-fueled madness. If anyone wants to casually lapse into a brain-death for a few hours I highly recommend them.

Lindell is a grifter. He knows that the more insane of a theory he throws out, the harder it is to prove, so the more he can deny having to prove it since "Deep State", "you wouldn't believe me", "socialists", whatever.

This is much more fruitful to his bottom line than "Trump barely won in 2016, and he barely lost in 2020."

Trump announced yesterday that he's going to fight the release of his taxes to the House Ways and Means Committee. He has until tomorrow to explain to the judge why he shouldn't have to release his taxes. I somehow doubt his lawyers are going to mention that it's something every President since Nixon has voluntarily done.

And a few days ago it was revealed that the dropout from homeschool university and Nazi aficionado Rep. Madison Cawthorn was briefly detained in February when he tried to bring a loaded Glock onto a commercial flight out of Asheville Regional Airport. Airport security discovered the weapon along with two loaded magazines in his carry-on bag.

Cawthorn's office claimed released a statement claiming his carry-on bag doubles as his "range bag" and that the firearm was "secured" and "unchambered," which is a weird way to admit that the gun was loaded and all he had to do was rack the slide and begin blasting.

TSA's policy is to fine people up to $10K for trying to bring a gun through security. There was no information if Cawthorn will be fined. TSA's policy is also that any dangerous item discovered in security is confiscated. They gave Cawthorn his weapon back.

The thing that a person robbed of the presidency would do, fight the release of his taxes.

Look, I'm not a gun nut by any stretch of the imagination, but every range I've been to has had a big ol' sign plastered near the front door that every gun needs to be cased and unloaded when you walk in. How does GOP dipsh*t Cawthorne not understand this?

Oh right. "Muh guns."

A colleague of mine works for the Canadian Border Services Agency.

The number of people who try to cross the border into Canada with loaded weapons in their vehicle and who try to claim the (US) 2nd Amendment has jurisdiction in Canada is surprisingly large.

OG_slinger wrote:

Trump announced yesterday that he's going to fight the release of his taxes to the House Ways and Means Committee. He has until tomorrow to explain to the judge why he shouldn't have to release his taxes. I somehow doubt his lawyers are going to mention that it's something every President since Nixon has voluntarily done.

He's going to have to explain why he's an exception to a law that has no exceptions. Especially now that he's a private citizen.

Congress’ authority to obtain tax returns from the IRS is an important part of its oversight powers—and the law establishing it was intended for situations just like the one Congress faces today. It was enacted to enhance Congress’ investigative powers in the wake of past executive branch corruption: the infamous Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s.

The legislative history behind the provision is richly described by University of Virginia School of Law Professor George Yin in a recent article. In sum, in 1922, President Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior accepted bribes from businessmen in exchange for favorable no-bid leases on public oil reserves, including the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming. Word of the shady transactions got out in the press, and Congress began a multiyear investigation. As part of that investigation, Congress sought some of the tax returns of those involved in the scandal. But President Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, initially refused. At the time, Congress had no power to compel tax returns; the president had to approve any release, including to Congress. Although Coolidge ultimately granted Congress’ request, this episode helped convince Congress that its requests for tax return information to aid investigations should not be dependent on the president’s approval.

Around the same time, some members of Congress were also frustrated by their inability to obtain tax information from Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon to determine whether his sprawling business interests influenced his recommendations to Congress on tax policy. Mellon was one of the country’s wealthiest men, and the tax policy changes he recommended to Congress would surely have affected his finances; thus, members sought information on those interests to determine how much weight to place on his recommendations. The Senate also launched an investigation into the Bureau of Internal Revenue, now known as the IRS, including whether it was showing favoritism toward businesses owned by Mellon. Senators found their investigation hampered by their reliance on the executive branch to obtain tax returns and by President Coolidge’s hostility to the investigation.

Against this background, Congress, via the Revenue Act of 1924, gave itself the power to compel the secretary of the treasury to furnish tax returns upon request. In approving the provision, legislators cited Congress’ need to review tax return information “to evaluate Administration tax proposals, develop its own tax legislative initiatives, and carry out investigations.” The provision faced opposition from some parties, including Coolidge, Mellon, and members of the business community, on the grounds that it could compromise taxpayer privacy. But in enacting the provision, Congress determined that access to tax returns was important for its legislative prerogatives, including gathering information for prospective legislation and performing oversight of the executive branch. The 1924 provision, with some amendments, is still in effect today.

In the 1970s, after abuses by the Nixon administration and prior administrations came to light, Congress strengthened the rules concerning tax return confidentiality. In 1976, Congress codified the general rule that tax returns are confidential and can be disclosed only in circumstances where Congress has provided an explicit exception. For example, the IRS can share tax returns with state tax authorities and with law enforcement agencies. Congress also retained the power it had established in 1924 to obtain tax returns upon request, now codified in IRC Section 6103(f).

In other words, he's going to lose in court. AGAIN.

I'm pretty sure that Cawthorne story was in the news back when it happened but it was just a quick blurb.

I wonder if Trump just looks at the courts as another way to get media attention...

Oh, yeah. The law is crystal clear. But TFG's taxes were requested over two years ago and back then Mnuchin refused to hand them over and the DOJ shat out a legal memo saying that Congress didn't have the right to compel the information.

JC wrote:

I wonder if Trump just looks at the courts as another way to get media attention...

His standard procedure is to continually appeal because it just drags out the process and delays the inevitable (though he's stiffing Giuliani on legal fees so I gotta wonder what law firm wants to rack up a lot of billable hours they're never going to get paid for). I'm sure he'll fund raise off of it claiming that the Biden DOJ is abusing their power and is personally attacking him and the the red hats will gobble it up.

I realize this isn't surprising but it's still disgusting...

Washington (CNN)Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Tuesday announced pardons for Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis homeowners who pointed guns at protesters near their home last summer.

The couple, who pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident, were among the 12 pardons that Parson granted last week, the governor's office said in a statement.

The GOP party platform now.

Thank god the McCloskeys were not real criminals and selling loose cigarettes!

JC wrote:

I realize this isn't surprising but it's still disgusting...

Washington (CNN)Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Tuesday announced pardons for Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis homeowners who pointed guns at protesters near their home last summer.

The couple, who pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident, were among the 12 pardons that Parson granted last week, the governor's office said in a statement.

From a few weeks ago...

Missouri man has spent 4 decades in prison for a triple murder prosecutors now say he didn’t commit. But his clemency petition is not a ‘priority,’ governor says.

Chicago Tribune wrote:

Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says addressing the clemency petition for a man who’s been behind bars for a triple murder for more than four decades is not a “priority,” even though prosecutors say he didn’t commit the crime.

Parson noted that Kevin Strickland, 62, was tried “by a jury of his peers” and found guilty. But he added that he knew there was “a lot more information out there.”

Parson has a backlog of about 3,000 clemency requests, the Kansas City Star reported. He issued almost no pardons before his reelection in 2020 but has since begun issuing a group of pardons monthly.

“When something like that comes up, we look at those cases, but I don’t know that that necessarily makes it a priority to jump in front of the line,” Parson said during a Monday news conference. “We understand some cases are going to draw more attention through the media than others, but we’re just going to look at those things.”

Several state lawmakers from both sides of the aisle signed a letter seeking a pardon for Strickland, who has maintained his innocence since he was convicted in the April 1978 deaths of three people in Kansas City.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has called for his release. Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, Jackson County’s presiding judge, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and members of the team that convicted Strickland also have said he should be exonerated.

...

The Star reported in September that two men who pleaded guilty in the killings for decades swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the shooting. The only eyewitness also recanted and wanted Strickland released.

In a petition filed with the Missouri Supreme Court in May, defense attorneys also noted that prosecutors removed the only four Black potential jurors from the trial for Strickland, who is Black.

Because of the prosecution’s “racially motivated” strikes, Strickland’s fate was decided by an all-white jury during a trial overseen by a white judge with white lawyers, the Star reported.

A $5 Million Fine for Classroom Discussions on Race? In Tennessee, This Is the New Reality

Education Week wrote:

Tennessee aims to levy fines starting at $1 million and rising to $5 million on school districts each time one of their teachers is found to have “knowingly violated” state restrictions on classroom discussions about systemic racism, white privilege, and sexism, according to guidance proposed by the state’s department of education late last week.

Teachers could also be disciplined or lose their licenses for teaching that the United States is inherently racist or sexist or making a student feel “guilt or anguish” because of past actions committed by their race or sex.

The guidance received immediate backlash from advocates of students of color in the state who say it would have a disproportionate impact on already underfunded, majority Black and Latino school districts.

“There’s also a fear for young students of color who are in districts that are majority white and now there’s no protection for them and their white student peers in learning about truthful history and racism,” said Cardell Orrin, the executive director of Stand for Children Tennessee, a group that advocates for historically disenfranchised students.

The new guidance lays out the complaint process that a current student, parent, or employee can initiate against a district if they believe an educator has violated the law, but it does not elaborate on what specifically school districts are banned from teaching, as many teacher advocates had hoped. Instead, it cites 11 broad concepts that teachers can’t teach or use materials to promote. For example, students can’t be told that they are “inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously,” or bear responsibility for past actions committed by members of their race or sex. Experts have called the language of these laws vague.

Tennessee’s department of education will allow the public to weigh in on the rules until Wednesday, Aug. 11, according to the Tennessean.

Tennessee is one of 11 states this year that have drastically curtailed the ways that districts can fight systemic and individual acts of racism, homophobia, and sexism in the classroom and how teachers can talk to students about the ways America’s government has historically discriminated against minorities. Another 16 states have similar bills that are set to be considered during next year’s legislative session.

Advocates of the bills argue that public school districts are indoctrinating students with teachers’ political agendas and, through their equity initiatives, giving students of color an unfair advantage over white students.

Opponents of the bills argue that school districts can no longer ignore longstanding academic disparities between white students and students of color and are obligated to teach all students a more complete and nuanced version of America’s racist past.

In most instances, the laws spell out which anti-racist initiatives districts are no longer allowed to practice and what “divisive” concepts teachers are no longer allowed to discuss, but state legislatures left room for state departments of education to determine how to enforce the laws.

Several lawyers Education Week has spoken to have expressed fear that state departments will make the laws more stringent through the rules.

Tennessee’s Department of Education is the second in the country to release additional guidance on how its censorship law will be enforced, following Oklahoma’s state department, which released guidance in mid-July.

Oklahoma educators could have their teaching licenses suspended or revoked and schools could lose accreditation if an investigation finds evidence that they taught about racism and sexism in ways that violated the law.

Oklahoma will also allow parents the right to inspect curriculum, instructional materials, classroom assignments, and lesson plans to “ensure compliance.”

Tennessee’s 11-page document outlines the process of filing a complaint alleging the violation of the law and the consequences that teachers might face if the district or state determines that they used prohibited materials or discussed a banned concept. For the most part, school districts will be in charge of investigating a complaint and deciding a course of action. In instances where the accuser or the accused disagree with the district’s decision, the state’s commissioner of education will have the final say.

Like Oklahoma’s rules, Tennessee’s also require school districts to investigate complaints if parents or students claim that an educator violated the law.

Parents, students or district employees can file complaints up to 30 days after the violation allegedly occurred, according to the rules. After a district receives the complaint, it has 60 days to investigate. If it finds the allegations to be true, it must start remedial action such as removing the reference material cited in the complaint from the curriculum or taking “disciplinary or licensure action against a teacher,” the rules say.

Either the complainant or person the complaint accused of violating the law can appeal the district’s decision within 15 days to the state department’s review committee. If the committee finds that a prohibited concept was taught, it can file a report to the commissioner, who will determine if the allegation is substantiated.

“It could be worse. It could’ve been that [complaints] go straight to the state and the state decides to take money away,” said Orrin. “This puts enough layers of local control in the process that it makes a lot of sense to allow teachers to teach what they need to teach, and figure out where complaints are coming from and then start to address it from there.”

If the department then determines that a violation occurred, it can withhold $1 million or 2 percent of the district’s state funding, whichever is less. The fines ramp up with each violation, amounting to a penalty of $5 million or 10 percent of state funding for the fifth time a district is determined to be in violation of state law.

Tennessee’s state department has already started to receive complaints of violations of the law.

In June, the Williamson County chapter of the national group Moms for Liberty, a group advocating for “parental rights,” wrote to Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn objecting to a lesson about Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate an elementary school in Louisiana, which they said made white students in the class feel uncomfortable.

“Targeting elementary age children with daily lessons on fighting past injustices as if they were occurring in present day violates Tennessee law and will sow the seeds of racial strife, neo-racism (and) neo-segregation,” Robin Steenman, the chair of the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty wrote in the complaint.

We've gone from conservatives freaking out about a single point made in the introductory essay of the 1619 Project to states passing laws that will strip schools of millions in public funding and teachers of their licenses if the most knuckle-dragging, OANN-watching, racist POS in a district complains that their kid's fee fees were hurt when they learn that America isn't perfect.

Snowflakes

I don't really see this as a vicious power grab by reactionaries. I see this as a vicious attempt by reactionaries to prevent a power grab by actual historians. This doesn't make it better, but in that context you can see not only their desperation in trying to prevent change, but also their abject failure. Tiktok -- the Chinese owned social media platform that's also the primary social media platform that matters to zoomers -- has an incredibly well established education system focused explicitly on the parts of American History the reactionaries don't have the courage to discuss.

The horses long since left the public classroom barn. Finding a dead one still inside and beating it is quite the hollow victory.

Seth, people in the South are still inundated by media pushing the Republican and Biblical Literalist narratives. Religious radio and talk radio are uniformly extreme; many of these shows appear on television, and of course all over the Internet. Churches and workplaces have plenty of people willing to normalize this stuff (as some of our GWJers can attest) so there’s a sort of community norm that is policed through everyday social interactions.

There’s a huge self-sustaining ecosystem built up in places like Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and nearby states that goes well beyond Internet media. It’s been in place since before the Civil War, and getting rid of it has always been a task with a decades-long horizon, while we have not found anything yet (since Reconstruction ended) that would start that clock really ticking, except the literal dying out of the radicals through age.

Multimillion dollar fines? Man, they are REALLY scared of the truth.

Seth wrote:

I don't really see this as a vicious power grab by reactionaries. I see this as a vicious attempt by reactionaries to prevent a power grab by actual historians. This doesn't make it better, but in that context you can see not only their desperation in trying to prevent change, but also their abject failure. Tiktok -- the Chinese owned social media platform that's also the primary social media platform that matters to zoomers -- has an incredibly well established education system focused explicitly on the parts of American History the reactionaries don't have the courage to discuss.

And what's a Tennessee teacher supposed to do when a zoomer brings up something they saw on TikTok in class? The kid is just asking a question, but the teacher will know that even acknowledging it could be interpreted as promoting one of the "prohibited concepts" the law established which could result in their teaching certificate getting yanked or a large chunk of their schools' already inadequate funding disappearing.

Worse, the "prohibited concepts" relies on a student's (or, much more likely, a parent's) interpretation of what's being taught and we know that these people already have the poorest grasp of American history and civics and what they do know is often filtered through a lense of nationalist propaganda that begins and ends with the idea that America in the greatest country in the world.

Yep, welcome to the suck. Sucks a little less than it did before, but still plenty of suck to go around.

The dam protecting weak religious dogma against actual history remains strong, and will probably never collapse. But there’s more holes in it today than ever before. These school board clown shows are fingers plugging leaks.